“That girl that saved Bram’s life.” Price leaned forward and rested his hands on his face, elbows to his knees. “Surprises the shit out of me, to be honest. We’ve spent all this time thinkin’ she was crazy when she wasn’t.”
“You and everyone else in this town,” Jeremiah, my uncle, said. “I only heard the worst of the worst about her. I have a cop buddy. They called her Crazy Dork at the police station when she would leave.”
For some reason, that made me incredibly pissed.
“Don’t call her that ever again,” I grumbled.
Jeremiah held up his hands. “Look, I’m not calling her that to call her that out of spite. I just wanted you to know what they called her. They’re the ones that look like complete dumbasses here. Amon may talk smooth, but one of those lazy motherfuckers should’ve gotten off their asses and investigated her claims.”
“How do you know they didn’t?” Shine asked curiously.
I looked at the phone, then back to the screen.
“Because Amon was up the mayor’s ass as his financial advisor. He had ins everywhere and is rich as fuck. Why would anyone believe her over that man that insinuated himself right in the middle of a pack of lazy fucks that protected him?” Jeremiah crossed his arms over his chest.
“Hey,” Shine asked suddenly. “Are you still on track for graduating?”
I was.
“I have a month and a half left,” I admitted. “Then I’m officially certified to underwater weld.”
I’d missed a few important tests while I was being tortured, but my instructors understood due to the extenuating circumstances.
“Sweet,” Shine said. “Glad that motherfucker didn’t ruin that for you.”
“Same,” I agreed.
Though, Mimi very well might.
At first, she’d never really been happy about it.
But now, knowing that I was going to be doing something that dangerous?
It damn near sent her into panic attacks when we talked about what I would be doing with my degree in a few weeks.
Needless to say, that was one of the things we didn’t talk about.
Amon’s words brought all of our attention back to the television, even Shine on his own at his place in Germany.
“I did it because my sister deserved to be scared and know that she’s the reason it happened.” Amon shrugged as if his words made any sense whatsoever.
“What did your sister do to deserve that treatment?” the prosecutor asked.
Amon once again looked over toward his sister, and this time, the camera moved with his gaze.
Then, there in the middle of a murder trial, Dorcas sat. Looking scared and frightened, and crying her eyes out.
I wanted to commit murder just to erase those tears off of her face.
“Because I don’t like when I see her happy,” Amon answered honestly.
• • •
“You’re not going to let me go in there?” Mimi hissed. “If she can handle it, I can handle it.”
I looked at where Dorcas had disappeared inside.
Then made my decision. “Mimi, you’re going to have to control yourself. You’re going to drop me off, then go home, because you’re driving me fuckin’ nuts. Please, for the love of God, give me some fuckin’ space.”
Mimi looked so affronted that I chose that moment to open the car door and prayed that she wouldn’t follow.
She looked at me but made no move to loosen her seat belt.
And I had a feeling I would pay for my outburst later, too.
I could see the anger in her eyes and the way she shut her mouth so completely that a thin line of red appeared where her bowtie lips used to be.
“Bye,” I grumbled, getting out of the car.
She waited half a second past when I closed the door to peel out of the parking lot. A spray of gravel lay in her wake and pinged off of my shoes.
I cursed and hurried toward the door, only to come to an almost complete stop the moment I reached it.
The girl, Dorcas, was standing there looking confused.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
My brows rose. “Is there a problem with me being here?”
She opened her mouth, closed it, and then shrugged. “I figured since you gave your testimony online via webcam, that meant that you weren’t coming in at all.”
That had been a calculated thing on the lawyer’s part. He’d thought with me being there in person, that they might see the anger in the way I held myself and be more focused on me than on the psycho.
According to my lawyer, I was a bit ‘intimidating’ and they didn’t want that issue.
Whatever.
I didn’t care.
But he was right.
Over the last few weeks of healing, and the previous beating I’d taken, my face had matured into some different lines that hadn’t previously been there.
It also didn’t help that I was six foot four and a half and had hands the size of dinner plates.
Oh, and the new tattoo I’d gotten that slithered up my neck. The words: Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand. Blood and revenge are hammering in my head. The William Shakespeare quote had been on a knife that Tide had gotten me upon my exit from the hospital. It’d been so à propos that I’d decided it needed to be embedded in my skin for me to remember every single day for the rest of my life.
One day, Amon Wheeler would pay for his sins, even if I had to slip into his loony bin in the middle of the night and do it with my bare hands.
Because that’s how I saw today going.
I knew without a doubt in my mind that Amon would be getting a free ride to the psych facility.
I also knew that he would be living a cush life, because Amon was slick. He’d get anyone and everyone on his side that was in that facility. And he would be out.
One way or the other.
Whether it was ten years or thirty.
“That was because, apparently, I’m scary. And they didn’t want the jury focusing on me and my hatred. And instead wanted the focus on Amon and what he did,” I explained as I grabbed the door from her hands and held it wider open. “After you.”
She went, but she looked like she dragged her feet the entire way to the courtroom.
I stayed on her heels since she seemed to know where she was going.
We didn’t sit next to each other, though.
She went to one corner, and I went to the other, but both of us were bathed in the shadows of the shitty courtroom.
There we sat for hours while the jury deliberated after closing statements were given.
Hours that felt like long days and even longer nights.
And, when the jury finally came out and resumed their seats, and the one stood up to speak, I didn’t have to be a genius to know what he was about to say.
“We find the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity,” the juror said strongly.
It wasn’t the words that the juror said, though, that had my skin crawling. It was the way that Amon looked at Dorcas so triumphantly that did it. Anger and disgust dueled through my veins, and I wanted nothing more than to pull out a gun and shoot him straight through his smug face.
But, surprisingly, it was Dorcas that stood up and turned, catching my eye.
I knew she wanted me to follow, so I did, which saved me from doing something completely stupid.